


aftermath

by jade304



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: (a little bit), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Gen, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-08
Updated: 2017-04-08
Packaged: 2018-10-16 14:30:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10573206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jade304/pseuds/jade304
Summary: The world noctis sacrificed everything for no longer remembers him.





	

**Author's Note:**

> i promised myself i'd have something posted by saturday night so i'm determined, even if it's just this
> 
> not proofread in any form, so heads up for mistakes.

 

 

 

They sit on the steps of the citadel, where people are busy clearing out the last traces of the late King Regis Lucis Caelum, sitting underneath the new blue sky. The three of them served King Regis in the Crownsguard, but everything has been placed on a temporary hold as Cor and the remaining members of the senior guard try to regroup. They’re surrounded by folders of photographs, ones Prompto carries around from the roadtrip the three of them took to Altissia over ten years ago.

“What was up with this joke?” Gladiolus asks, gesturing to one picture. It’s of him and Prompto making peace signs at the camera, with Ignis standing off in the corner, leaving a large gap between them. “There’s about fifty more of them all like this.”

“Perhaps something smelled,” Ignis says, and Prompto gives him a shove.

“Lots of neat scenic shots here,” The blonde says, going back to his stack. Both he and Gladio are going through them, Ignis sitting between them as they describe them all. “Remember Cape Caem? Got some really cool ones of the ocean here…”

“Over a fourth of these are scenic shots,” Gladiolus snorts. “Must be a really cool ocean.”

“Do you still have that photo you took of all of us at the lighthouse? Before we set off for Altissia?” Ignis asks.

“I don’t, actually,” Prompto says, flipping back through the folder. “It must’ve slipped out of my pocket somewhere along the way. I can always print another copy of it though if you want?

 

 

 

“That’s about the last of them from the hall,” Monica says, gently lowering the last large frame against the wall. Cor steps back to study it; It’s the painting of the five of them by the lake, now over 40 years old. Cid, Weskham, Cor himself, and Regis are all seated by the edge of the sea with Insomnia on the horizon, their chocobos at their sides. It’s a recreation of a photograph, so it’s absent Clarus, the stand-in photographer on their trip. The original photograph and film are probably long lost to time.

There’s only one other large one from this room; another one of the king’s notorious paintings. This one is of him standing alone, staring down at an empty chair. There are many like it in the citadel, painted at different points throughout the years.

“A lot of these, hm?” Monica says. “I never understood the symbolism behind them.”

Cor looks again, at the painting. The seat resembles the throne, a small little thing, child sized. “Regis probably would’ve had a child of his own, had he not been doomed to be the last king in line.”

The paintings are all done at intervals – the most recent, not this one, was completed about six months before the treaty signing was proposed. They mark Regis’s age, and perhaps a child’s growth, if the seat had ever been filled.

He remembers Regis, Clarus, the two of them raising both Gladiolus and Iris, and looks back to the other portrait of the lake. Ten years ago, it would’ve been Gladiolus, Ignis, and Prompto sitting on the bank. They’re all alive and well, helping them all piece together the parts lost after Ardyn’s sacrifice.

His heart aches.

There’s only one of them left in that painting now, the small boy of fifteen leaning against a chocobo. He picks up the painting of Regis and the empty chair to move with the others.

How empty things feel now, indeed.

 

 

 

 

They’ve planned to build a monument to Ardyn in the citadel square; there’s already plans and miniature concepts being planned and placed out, honoring the king of light. A carved stone replica of the crystal, with the king seated below it, arms spread.

Two thousand years have passed since the King fell, cast out for the daemons that consumed his mind and body. Two thousand years passing that his descendants gathered their strength through the crystal and within the ring of the Lucii, waiting to loan their power to the king to banish the daemons and the darkness from the world.

Ardyn Lucis Caelum had, in the end, needed to sacrifice his own life in order to save those of everyone else in the world, the strength of the crystal too heavy a weight on both himself and the darkness.

The plans for the statue are grandiose, but the king’s face is melancholy. Staring down at the ground with the expression that almost feels like this is not how he wished for things to go. That, maybe, the king’s sacrifice held more of a weight than anyone still alive could ever know or remember.

 

 

 

 

A dog curls up on the front steps of the citadel, basking in the morning sunlight.

It lifts its head, barks excitedly as the three friends approach – they give it a momentary pat on the head, and it wags its tail. They give it the usual “there’s a good boy!” before heading into the building. It barks after them, and the typical greeting ritual is complete.

The dog goes to sit back on the front steps. It stares at the empty space on the square, looking through it, at something that no passerby could guess. Dog things, perhaps. It barks again, only the once, at the empty square. It echoes in the silence.

The dog jumps to its feet, and this time gazes up at the bright blue sky. It gives another affirmative bark, then runs off across the square.

 

 

 

 

_He won’t want to tell them the full of it._

_He knows they’ll grieve him in their last days together as they set off for Insomnia, that the road there will be with the cloud hanging over all of them. He won’t give them another reason to mourn him._

_The meaning of the Draconian's words echo back in his head: they won't remember him. It'll be like he was never alive._

_It's an achingly lonely feeling, suffocating, and his chest tightens with pity, because he knows that_ he  _knows, and knows how this will feel. But he will soon be gone, and his friends will not have the cloud of loss weighing them. The world will go on. Brighter, perhaps, than it ever has been with him alive in it._

_It’s almost over now._


End file.
